Blessing Read online

  Aaron had many things to say, as well. “You are questioning my guilt?”

  “Indeed I am, Aaron Brown,” she said, ever so softly.

  His Stetson lay brim side up on the washstand beside him. He picked it up with one hand and settled it atop his head, then turned to his sister. “Elizabeth, will you excuse us for an hour this evening? Uley and I have matters to discuss. I believe we’ll go for a carriage ride.”

  “A carriage ride?” Elizabeth asked, clearly astonished. “With this young fellow?”

  “Yes,” Aaron said. “Will you come, Uley?”

  Uley peered up at Aaron to see his eyes sparkling with mirth beneath the brim of his hat. Elizabeth probably thought her brother had gone mad during his long, tedious days waiting for justice. “It isn’t necessary, Mr. Brown,” Uley said. But she wanted to say instead, I’d love to take a carriage ride, Aaron. A carriage ride would be my pleasure. But she couldn’t. Elizabeth Calderwood certainly wouldn’t expect a young fellow to say that.

  It was as if Aaron read every thought in her eyes. “I hoped you’d agree. Good evening, Elizabeth.”

  “Aaron.”

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  “Is it safe for you to be roaming the streets? Suppose a lynch mob decided to take matters into their own hands? And what about Harris Olney?”

  “You think Olney would go after me and jeopardize his chance to go scot-free? He’s too smart for that. Besides—” He turned to Uley again and winked. Winked, for the second time since she’d known him. “Besides, Uley isn’t going to let anybody get away with anything. The people in this town know that. They wouldn’t try anything with Uley along.”

  Elizabeth looked skeptically at the small figure standing beside her brother, a figure whose face had turned decidedly pink. “Very well,” she said. “I learned years ago that it does no good to warn you of things.”

  “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

  Uley followed him down the carpeted steps at the Pacific Hotel, tromping with her boots in exactly the same cadence as the man two steps ahead of her. How long will I descend stairs this way? she wondered for some absurd reason. She wished she could do it somewhat differently, gliding downward with toes pointed beneath ruffled skirts, sliding one gloved hand along the fancy mahogany banister until she reached the ground.

  What might Aaron say if he turned to see her coming toward him in such a manner?

  She knew she was getting what she deserved after all. She lived entangled by a snare of her own design. She had taken matters into her own hands without a thought to the honesty of her ways, without a thought to what the implications might be. Oh, Father. Are You teaching me this? Was I listening to You when I chose this, or was I listening to an answer of my own making?

  She didn’t speak to him again until they reached Washington Avenue. “Uley isn’t going to let anybody get away with anything?” she said, mimicking him. “The people in this town wouldn’t try anything with Uley along?”

  “Well—” he shrugged and grinned mightily “—I had to tell her something, didn’t I?”

  “You make me sound as if I’m the marshal of this town.”

  “You very well should be. You’re the one who brought me in, after all. Let’s go this way—” he pointed “—to the livery stable.”

  “I wondered where you’d find a carriage,” she said. “Don’t have many carriages around Tin Cup, Colorado.”

  He glanced down at her fondly. “A gal like you deserves a ride in a carriage, Uley. I saw one over here the other day, one with shiny red wheels and a cushioned velvet seat the likes of which I haven’t seen since the last time I left home. I’ve the money to pay for it.”

  “It isn’t there. Santa Fe Moll bought it this morning.”

  She didn’t understand why he looked so disappointed. “And just how do you know that?”

  “I met Laura over there. Charles Ongewach did the bargaining, and Laura rode the extra horse. We did some talking about things…”

  “What things?”

  About how a woman feels when a man looks at me the way you do. Because I had to know. Because of how I feel when you come around me. “Just things.”

  “Things gals talk about?”

  “I suppose.”

  They’d almost arrived at the stable. Aaron laid one hand on her arm in the darkness. Uley felt all her hairs rise on end as his fingers sent a shock coursing through her like the water in Willow Creek running downstream over rocks. Each time Aaron grazed his fingers against her skin, she felt as if his touch might sweep her away. “Laura knows, then.”

  “I told her today.” The look he saw in her eyes spoke of many things, among them joy at having shared it, given it over at last to the confidence of a friend.

  “I’m not the only one who knows anymore.” He knew it was selfish, but he’d enjoyed being her only confidant. In some inexplicable way, the knowledge had tied her to him. Now he felt as if, in telling Laura, she were pulling free.

  “Look,” she said, tugging at his sleeve. “There’s our carriage.”

  In front of the livery stable stood a dilapidated supply wagon, its splintering sideboards weathered to a dun gray.

  “That isn’t the vehicle I had in mind.” Aaron guided her past the wide double gates and the sign reading H. H. Smith & Co. fronting Washington Avenue. Around the corner on Walnut Street, they both could see the firelight flickering through the uneven glass panes of Hansen Smith’s cabin, throwing oblique golden shapes onto the ground outside. Aaron knocked on the door.

  Smith answered it, squinting out into the darkness. “What’s going on out here?”

  “I’m here to hire that carriage you had parked out in front this morning.”

  “Can’t do that,” Smith said. “Sold that carriage to Santa Fe Moll and Charles Ongewach.”

  “I’ll have another one, then.”

  “Don’t have another. Took me seven months to order that one and get it in over the Continental Divide.”

  “Do you have anything that would be worthy of—” He stopped. He’d been about to say, “Worthy of a lady.” He certainly couldn’t expound on that subject when it was Uley riding by his side. “Worthy of a ride through the trees this evening?”

  “Only thing I’ve got is that wagon out front. Did you see it?”

  “I did.”

  “For the right price, I’ll come out and hitch up the mules.”

  “Don’t want mules. I want horses. The finest ones you’ve got.”

  “You planning on doing something spectacular, Brown? Mules’ll pull that wagon just fine.”

  Aaron sighed and reached toward his pocket. He kept forgetting he wasn’t on the Eastern Slope. On the eastern side of the Rockies, a gentleman would never take a lady out for a jaunt behind two mules. He’d better get used to this, he decided. He was guaranteed only three more weeks of life. And every one of those last days would be spent here in Tin Cup, minding the gold camp, spending time with Uley and fuming over what Harris Olney had tried to do to his sister. “Are mules my only choice?”

  “Won’t have horses until next month, when I buy what’s left of Jason Farley’s estate. He had three horses over there I’m sore in need of.”

  “I’ll have the mules.”

  “You two come on in by the fire while I go open up the barn,” Smith said. “Won’t take long.” He passed Uley in the yard and smacked her on the back. “You getting lucky, boy. Ongewach and I figured you were alone with Tin Can Laura almost three hours today. If Moll finds out, she’ll charge you.”

  He hurried on.

  Aaron stepped in beside the fire and grinned at Uley as the fire glimmered against her face. “Your friendship with Laura doesn’t come easy, does it?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t.” She stared into the crackling flames a moment before she went on. I’m afraid, Father. Is this something of my own making too, or that You’re calling me for? “I don’t suppose it would come any easier i
f they knew I was a gal, either. Maybe it would be even worse.”

  Hansen Smith came back five minutes later and informed them that he’d harnessed the mules.

  “We’ll be back in an hour,” Aaron told him.

  “I’ll be in bed by then,” Hansen Smith instructed them. “Just tie the lead mule to the rail when you get back.”

  After Hansen Smith’s fire, the darkness seemed to close in around them as Aaron easily lifted Uley to her spot in the wagon. She scooted across the seat to reach for the reins and felt splinters pierce her underside.

  “Don’t scoot,” she warned Aaron. “You’ll be sittin’ on a seatful of splinters, just like I am.”

  After he climbed up, he reached behind them and pulled out two wool blankets. One he folded and set on the seat beside her. “There you go, ma’am,” he said, teasing her. “No more discomfort for you. Here’s the velvet cushion I promised.” The second blanket he draped about her shoulders.

  The breeze had dropped at dusk, but a dry chill always crept in at night this close to the timberline. The clear-star cold of evening came as a vast difference from the fireside in Hansen Smith’s cabin. “Yah!” Aaron bellowed as he flipped the reins. “Get on now, mules….”

  The wagon lurched forward and, unaware, Uley placed one small hand upon Aaron’s knee for balance. The harnesses rattled and the hooves clattered against the stones in the street.

  Without speaking, Aaron turned the team toward the north, heading downstream with the creek. They heard it dancing along beside them for a while, dashing over rocks and doubling back to bubble against its banks. For a time they wound among the trees, the great, spindly lodgepoles jutting against the starlit sky. The sharp tang of pine mixed with the fertile loamy scent of spring, and the air was redolent with the smell of things just beginning to grow.

  Uley suddenly realized where she’d laid her hand.

  She pulled it back swiftly and placed it beside her on the ancient seat, atop the blanket.

  At her movement, Aaron looked across at her. When she began to redden, he quickly looked ahead.

  Uley stared straight on, pretending not to notice. Oh, but she did…she did.

  From their left in the darkness came the croaking sounds of frogs echoing back and forth. It was early yet for such a seasonal proclamation. Uley grinned. “They’re like us, aren’t they?”

  “Who is like us?”

  “The frogs.”

  Aaron slapped the reins once more, and the mules picked up their pace. “I don’t know that I like being compared to something that has grown from a pollywog.”

  “I mean they can’t wait for things. They’ve found puddles already, and they’re croaking as if they’ve found a marsh when all they’ve found is a muddy spot in the meadow grasses.”

  “Ah,” he said. “But when the puddle dries, the frog will find another home.”

  “Crazy frogs,” Uley commented. “They think they’ve got one thing when they’ve got something altogether different.”

  “Reminds me of you,” Aaron said, very quietly.

  They fell silent again.

  Sorry was the man, Aaron thought, who took a lady for a jaunt behind mules. No one could know how disappointed he was at not having been able to hire the carriage. He’d been wishing to take Uley for a ride ever since he’d seen the fancy contraption parked out in front of the livery early this morning. This was another of the things he’d grow used to, he supposed, spending weeks in a forsaken mining camp, a place where the town’s madam drove a vehicle so extravagant it took seven months to bring it in over the Divide.

  He’d had great plans. With the carriage, he’d wanted to make Uley feel…what? Like the lady he thought she wanted to be? Like the young woman he couldn’t help but see in her?

  They rode on in silence, two stiff forms silhouetted against the stars, shoulder to shoulder, inches apart, faces turned toward the lane. Their hands—oh, how conscious Aaron was of their hands. His hands gripped the reins, while her hands gripped the blanket around her shoulders. His hands drenched the leather with sweat, while hers trembled from the chill.

  Aaron thought of her tiny hand grasping his knee. He thought of the way her fingers had curled against his leg, depending on him for balance. Remembrance of her touch sent an agitated sensation skittering across his skin.

  As Uley sat beside him now, she found herself fully aware of Aaron, certain that this moment would come back each time she smelled the sage or perused the stars or sat atop a wagon.

  It was she who spoke at last. “I hadn’t meant to interrupt your letter-writing. I know you haven’t any time to waste getting your message off to Dawson Hayes.”

  “I needed time away to think, Uley. The words weren’t coming. And Elizabeth kept peering over my shoulder like a headmistress waiting to rap my knuckles with a ruler.”

  “You think he’ll come?”

  “I think I’ll be lucky if the letter ever reaches him.”

  They’d broken through the trees now, and ahead of them, as a V of land opened up into a wide-spread valley, lay the sage flats and the ranch that had been Jason Farley’s. The surrounding hills crested in a loaf-shaped butte to their right, from which rose the massive, ghostly crags of the Saguache Mountains. A nighthawk whistled through the air as he dove toward the field to scoop up an evening-hatch fly.

  “What does Saguache mean?” Aaron asked, still feeling the newcomer. “It’s Ute, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “It means Blue Earth. I’ve always thought it the perfect name for them. Don’t you?”

  He reined the mules to a stop, and they sat awhile, each silently surveying the majesty of the summit which rose high above them, glowing silver in the moonlight. “I do.”

  As Uley gazed up at the snow-encrusted line of peaks that formed the Continental Divide, Aaron couldn’t help but study the profile of her face, its lines—which he saw now as delicate and ladylike—etched velvet-soft in the moon’s glow. Suppose…just suppose…I were to reach across and kiss her, he pondered. What then? For both of us?

  As if she’d sensed his thought, she turned from the mountains to face him. Even as he saw his wishes reflected in her eyes, he knew he dared not succumb to them. He had no right to devastate her so. In three weeks, he might very well be a dead man.

  He slapped the mules with the reins.

  Uley glanced away, but not before he saw her anticipation turn to disappointment in her eyes.

  I’m sorry, he wanted to say. I can’t make you care for me, Uley. I’ve asked too much of you already.

  She watched without speaking as he directed the team into a wide arc in the road and headed them back toward Tin Cup.

  She’s not the type to take a kiss lightly, Brown, so you’d better make very sure you’re willing to involve her heart in this before you do.

  As the wagon rattled back to town they both sat rigid as planks, inventing their own private stories to explain away the thing that had just happened between them.

  After she sent me sprawling in the dirt and turned me in to the marshal, Aaron thought, she wouldn’t be happy if I tried to kiss her. No matter if I began to care for her, I’m a common criminal who’ll probably hang.

  After he had to make me bring his stationery and post his letter, Uley thought, he wouldn’t want to kiss me. Oh, Father. No matter if I care for him, no matter if I’m a gal, after what I’ve done, I’ll never be a proper lady in his sight or in the sight of this town.

  Ahead of them, the store fronts along Washington Avenue appeared against the trees. Only a few were dark at this late hour. The others were saloons, open all night tonight, because the miners had just been paid. Lantern light radiated from storefront after storefront. As Aaron and Uley wheeled past Frenchy’s Place, the swinging front gate gave way, and out toppled a drunken miner, his stein of beer still held high, despite the tangled condition of his legs.

  “A toast,” the man shouted into the streets. “A toast to our proud marshal! He is gonna hang th
at yellow-bellied—” he weaved to the left “—gun-totin’—” he weaved to the right “—good-for-nothin’—” his left leg went right, and his right leg went left “—skunk.” The man’s hairy, bulbous body went down, face first. The stein shattered. Beer hit the dirt, making nickel-sized circles in the dust.

  As a second inebriated miner left Frenchy’s, the swinging doors flapped open long enough to illuminate Aaron’s profile. His jaw was set rock-hard. “Better be getting you home, Uley. I’ve got a letter to write tonight.”

  “I hope it gets to Dawson Hayes, Aaron,” she said. “I really do.”

  The wagon and the mules clattered on through town, past the town hall, where, in three weeks’ time, Aaron’s fate would be decided. He didn’t even cast a glance in its direction. “Elizabeth and I’ll be moving tomorrow morning,” he said. “We can’t afford two rooms in the Pacific Hotel for the next three weeks.”

  “I don’t know why not,” Uley commented. “Everybody in town was willing to give Elizabeth a discount.”

  Aaron laughed. It was a sharp, harsh sound that didn’t ring true. “Yeah, but they’re chargin’ me double.”

  She looked at him in shock. “They’d do that?” But then it dawned on her. The men of Tin Cup were exercising the same skewed judgment against Aaron that she was so afraid of herself.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Elizabeth and I are moving into Aunt Kate Fischer’s boardinghouse tomorrow noon.”

  At his mention of his sister, Uley remembered the reason she’d paid a call upon Aaron Brown in the first place. “Aaron.” This time she placed her hand upon his arm.

  He looked down at it, and then—wonder of wonders—he covered it with his own. “Don’t remove it this time,” he told her gently, as a pink the colour of an August primrose tinted her cheeks. “Thank you for your company, Uley. I’ve enjoyed our ride.”

  “Me too,” she said. “And I wanted to tell you, I thought…” She didn’t know how to say it. She found it difficult to speak with his hand upon hers. Their fingers seemed to fit together with such perfection, his broad strong knuckles lying directly over hers.